352 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



during Lent and on certain days of the week as a sort of 

 protest against gluttony and excess, and there is no ob- 

 jection to it among Protestant Churches excepting that 

 it must not be claimed as a merit or the equivalent of 

 " good works." 



That fish were, even in the most ancient times, 

 allowed to be eaten on fast days is curious. It is sug- 

 gested by some students of this subject that the custom 

 came from Syria, and had to do with certain pagan 

 ceremonials and the worship of the fish-god Dagon. It 

 is supposed that some of these early Christians managed, 

 under the guise of a fast of the Church, to maintain 

 an ancient pagan custom and religious rite connected 

 with the Syrian fish-god. The Jews also eat fish on 

 Friday evening — though in both cases the origin of the 

 " fish-eating " was lost sight of in the early centuries of 

 the Christian era. On the other hand, it appears that 

 the worshippers of the fish-god (at any rate, at a remote 

 period) were forbidden to eat fish as being sacred ; hence 

 it seems possible that the permission of a fish diet to 

 Christians during days of fasting was given as a means 

 of encouraging those who retained pagan superstitions to 

 ignore and forget them. The supposition that the eating 

 of fish on certain days is a survival of a ceremonial ob- 

 servance connected with fish-worship is the more probable 

 explanation of the custom. 



The worship of fish or of a fish-god is one of the 

 outcomes of the old Nature-worship — the cult of Cybele 

 and Rhea, who in the Greek Islands became the great 

 mother Aphrodite born of the sea, and in Syria Ashtaroth 

 (Astarte). She appears also as Atargatis, the Syrian 

 fish-goddess born from a fish's egg, and worshipped at 

 Hierapolis ; her worshippers must not eat fish. Dagon, 



